Japan Activates First Marines Since WW2 to Bolster Defenses Against China
April 7th, 2018Via: Reuters:
Japan on Saturday activated its first marine unit since World War Two trained to counter invaders occupying Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea that Tokyo fears are vulnerable to attack by China.
How China Can Win a Trade War in 1 Move
April 6th, 2018Via: The Week:
China will not be easily cowed in a trade dispute. Chinese President Xi Jinping is now exchanging threats of tit-for-tat tariffs with President Trump, who announced Thursday he’s considering raising the stakes another $100 billion. China vowed to defend itself “at any cost.”
Compared to the scale of the U.S. economy, the numbers are still relatively trivial and mostly theoretical. But if things do spiral into all-out trade war, it’s worth noting China has a nuclear option.
I’m referring to rare earth metals.
These are elements like dysprosium, neodymium, gadolinium, and ytterbium. They aren’t actually rare, but they do play crucial roles in everything from smart phones to electric car motors, hard drives, wind turbines, military radar, smart bombs, laser guidance, and more. They’re also quite difficult to mine and process.
It turns out the United States is almost entirely dependent on foreign suppliers for rare earth metals. More importantly, it’s almost entirely dependent on China specifically for rare earth metals that have been processed into a final and usable form.
Basically, if China really wanted to mess with America, it could just clamp down on these exports. That would throw a massive wrench into America’s supply chain for high-tech consumer products, not to mention much of our military’s advanced weapons systems.
In fact, China isn’t just America’s major supplier of rare earth metals; it’s the rest of the globe’s major supplier as well.
Body of CDC Worker Who Mysteriously Disappeared in February Found in a River
April 5th, 2018Via: Business Insider:
The mystery surrounding the February disappearance of a 35-year-old Centres for Disease Control and Prevention worker ended tragically this week, with the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department finding the CDC commander’s body in a river late Tuesday evening.
The Atlanta Police Department confirmed to Business Insider that Timothy Cunningham’s body was recovered in the Chattahoochee River in northwest Atlanta. Cunningham was wearing his favourite jogging shoes when he was found by a group of fishermen, police said.
Cunningham left work at the CDC feeling sick on February 12, then tried to call his mum on his drive home, but hadn’t been heard from since.
Maj. Michael O’Connor of the Atlanta Police Department said in February that Cunningham had recently been turned down for a promotion at work, and left feeling ill shortly after his supervisor explained why he’d been passed over.
Cunningham drove off that day and was never seen alive again, even as his car, credit and debit cards, dog, keys, and mobile phone were all recovered at his home, the police said.
“We found that to be an unusual circumstance in a missing persons case,” Major O’Connor told reporters at a press conference on Thursday afternoon. The only thing police said they found in Cunningham’s pockets when his body was recovered were three crystals.
Police said they “knew he was a collector of crystals.”
The muddy river spot where the officer was found wasn’t too far from his house, but there weren’t any roads or running trails nearby, so it’s not clear exactly how Cunningham got in there. Police say they’d conducted a “very thorough” search of the riverbanks in that area on February 23, but didn’t find any signs of the missing commander.
“We may never be able to tell you how he got into the river,” O’Connor said. Doctors who’ve examined his body say there’s no evidence of trauma or foul play, and they believe the cause of death is drowning.
China, Holding Treasuries, Keeps ‘Nuclear Option’ in U.S. Trade War
April 4th, 2018Via: Reuters:
It took China just 11 hours to retaliate against the United States for proposing tariffs on some 1,300 Chinese products, but Chinese officials are holding back on taking aim at their largest American import: government debt.
In a tit-for-tat response to the Trump administration’s plan for 25 percent duties on $50 billion of Chinese imports, China hit back with its own list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals. But officials signaled no interest for now in bringing their vast holdings of U.S. Treasuries to the fight.
China held around $1.17 trillion of Treasuries as of the end of January, making it the largest of America’s foreign creditors and the No. 2 overall owner of U.S. government bonds after the Federal Reserve. Any move by China to chop its Treasury portfolio could inflict significant harm on U.S. finances and global investors, driving bond yields higher and making it more costly to finance the federal government.
The Assassination Complex
April 4th, 2018Via: The Intercept:
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military’s kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides. The Intercept granted the source’s request for anonymity because the materials are classified and because the U.S. government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers. The stories in this series will refer to the source as “the source.”
The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. “This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the source said.
Baltimore Police Robbed Homeless People and Resold Confiscated Heroin and Ecstasy Back on the Street
April 4th, 2018Via: Daily Mail:
It was a case that would rock Baltimore to its core. An elite police squad robbing its own citizens, stealing thousands of dollars and re-selling confiscated drugs.
There were homeless men and construction workers who were robbed, prisoners who claimed they were framed, and a shed where ecstasy and heroin were stored.
What sounds like a plot out of a Hollywood film became reality in March 2017 when seven of the eight men who made up the Gun Trace Task force were arrested.
They became one of America’s most corrupt police force, and their entire world came crashing down due to one rogue GPS tracker, according to the BBC.
Why Americans Are Avoiding the Doctor
April 4th, 2018Via: MarketWatch:
Between a third and a half of people age 45 to 59 and a quarter of those 60+ went without needed health care in the past year due to its cost, according to a troubling new survey from the West Health Institute and NORC at the University of Chicago.
“We were surprised by the magnitude of the findings,” said Dr. Zia Agha, chief medical officer at the West Health Institute, a nonprofit applied medical research organization based in San Diego. “And 80% of the people we surveyed had health insurance, so just having insurance does not make you immune to health care costs.”
Southern California: Man Rents Garden Sheds in His Backyard for $750/Month
April 4th, 2018Via: Craig’s List:
I have three small PRIVATE resin cabins right behind my home for professional Adults Working males only. That work away from home and/or travels a great deal. Must be Honest, Quiet, Clean, Reliable, and must be employed with a secure Job and have no problem paying the Rent ON Time and in (CASH ONLY) NO CHECKS.
Zipline’s Bigger, Faster Drones Will Deliver Blood in the United States This Year
April 4th, 2018Via: IEEE Spectrum:
The delivery drone startup has been operating in Rwanda since October of 2016, using small autonomous fixed-wing aircraft to paradrop critical blood products to rural medical clinics. The system is able to get blood from a centralized distribution center to where it’s needed in minutes, independent of time of day, traffic, or weather. Zipline now manages 20 percent of rural Rwanda’s blood supply, and has flown more than 300,000 kilometers (km) worth of commercial deliveries, carrying some 7,000 units of blood.
Today, Zipline is announcing major upgrades to its entire delivery system, introducing a bigger drone that can deliver blood faster and more efficiently than ever. The new hardware is already flying in Rwanda, and Zipline plans to bring their drones to the U.S. to demonstrate medical product delivery in suburban and rural areas later this year.
NASA Hires Lockheed Martin to Build Quiet Supersonic X-Plane
April 3rd, 2018Via: space.com:
NASA has taken a huge leap forward in its quest to create an aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound without causing the ear-splitting sonic boom.
The space agency announced today (April 2) that it has awarded the aerospace company Lockheed Martin a $247.5 million contract to design and build a new X-plane, known as the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD), which may soar silently over the U.S. by 2022.
Today’s announcement comes less than two weeks after President Donald Trump signed a federal budget for FY2019 that fully funds the LBFD. In his budget proposal, Trump noted that the X-plane “would open a new market for U.S. companies to build faster commercial airliners, creating jobs and cutting cross-country flight times in half.”
